Author: Mia, ChainCatcher

Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher

Recently, the RWA protocol Ondo Finance and its affiliated organization, the Ondo Foundation, successfully passed the proposal to unlock the ONDO tokens. ONDO tokens officially entered full circulation on January 18th. Meanwhile, Coinbase added Ondo Finance (ONDO) to its asset listing roadmap, and Binance quickly followed suit by listing ONDO 1-50x perpetual contracts. According to Coingecko data, since its launch on the 18th, ONDO tokens have surged by over 300%. In less than a week, ONDO has become a hot topic of discussion in the entire crypto community due to its impressive growth.

Following the surge after the unlock, controversy arose as it appeared that the project team actively sold tokens. According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, the team behind ONDO has allegedly sold a total of 60 million ONDO tokens since its listing. Currently, two addresses still hold 106 million tokens, accounting for 7.79% of the total circulation. Despite the substantial selling, the ONDO token price has remained relatively stable, hovering around $0.25. The stability in price is attributed to the attractiveness of capital from the RWA wave behind ONDO.

Ondo Finance and Traditional Financial Giants

Prior to the announcement of the token unlock proposal, Ondo Finance had already announced a community loyalty points program and its collaboration with Mantle and Solana to introduce USDY to its blockchain. Following the announcement of the token unlock, Ondo Finance further expanded its operations to the Asia-Pacific region on the 23rd, establishing its first office in Hong Kong. Subsequently, it also published an ecosystem directory on its official website, disclosing partnerships with key players in liquidity, custody, and other critical areas. Notably, the asset management and trust companies included traditional financial giants such as Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Ankura Trust, Clear Street, and NAV Consulting.

Ondo Finance received support from institutions such as BlackRock and Morgan Stanley from the outset and secured investments from top venture capital firms including Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Coinbase Ventures.

Cryptocurrency analyst McKenna publicly expressed a positive outlook on Ondo Finance as a "future blue-chip RWA asset," stating that "Ondo Finance has tokenized BlackRock's iShares ETFs as short-term US Treasury bond funds and has innovated in stablecoin-supported cash equivalents."

In March of last year, BlackRock's CEO Larry Fink stated in the annual letter to BlackRock shareholders that "BlackRock will continue to explore the digital asset ecosystem, particularly in areas most relevant to our clients, such as licensed blockchains and the tokenization of stocks and bonds." BlackRock's bet on Ondo undoubtedly provided an opportunity for its entry into the RWA field.

Currently, Ondo Finance has tokenized BlackRock's short-term US Treasury ETF: iShares Short Treasury Bond ETF (NASDAQ code: SHV), creating the OUSG (US Treasury) product. OUSG is a major contributing product to Ondo Finance's Total Value Locked (TVL). The current price of OUSG is $104.66, with an annualized yield of 4.69%. It is available for purchase on the Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana blockchains. As the issuer of the ETF, BlackRock charges a 0.15% ETF management fee, while OUSG is responsible for a 0.15% fund management fee. This undoubtedly serves as a successful case of traditional finance entering the RWA field. As Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, stated, "The next generation of the market, the next generation of securities, will be the tokenization of securities." With OUSG as a breakthrough, BlackRock has taken the first step in asset tokenization.

Financial Giants Competing in the RWA Field, Potentially Opening a Golden Age for Blockchain and Traditional Finance

In the future, Ondo may become a "blue-chip stock" in the RWA field. This is not the first time traditional finance has ventured into the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA). "Tokenizing all real assets to create liquidity for today's illiquid things" has always been the highest vision for developers in the crypto space.

An increasingly shared argument between the cryptocurrency and traditional finance sectors is that the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) will become the cornerstone of the next bull market, unlocking trillions of dollars of real assets into cryptocurrencies.

Boston Consulting Group has predicted that "the tokenized asset market could surge to $16 trillion by 2030," while Citigroup has stated that "by 2030, there will be $4 trillion to $5 trillion of tokenized digital securities, and trade finance transactions based on distributed ledger technology will also reach $1 trillion."

The tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) is also expanding into areas such as bonds, cars, gold, and real estate, which has successfully attracted the interest and attention of traditional financial giants.

As early as 2021, investment fund giant Franklin Templeton took the lead in launching RWA experiments, introducing the Franklin OnChain US Treasury Tokenized Fund on Stellar and expanding to Polygon in 2023. This fund is the first U.S. registered mutual fund to process transactions and record ownership on a public blockchain. Stellar provides fast, low-cost transactions and handles asset issuance and exchange in a decentralized manner.

The tokenization of RWA is opening a new golden age for blockchain and traditional finance. Today, numerous institutions are actively involved in RWA, including traditional financial giants such as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and Fidelity.

In November 2020, JPMorgan Chase launched the Onyx Digital Assets enterprise platform based on blockchain, aiming to transfer ownership rights of money market fund (MMF) shares through tokenizing collateral networks (TCN) using blockchain. This allows asset management companies and institutional investors to pledge or transfer MMF shares as collateral. Subsequently, in October 2022, JPMorgan Chase achieved tokenized dollar deposits on the Quorum blockchain through JPM Coin.

Qualcomm launched its digital asset platform GS DAP in January last year. The platform is developed based on Digital Asset's Daml smart contract language and the privacy blockchain Canton. The platform ensures that data is shared only with qualified stakeholders through its privacy protocol and supports the scalability required for globally connected assets.

Fidelity faced obstacles in opening a Bitcoin account in its 401(k) last year and is currently in a wait-and-see mode in the RWA field.

Currently, the market value of Ondo's short-term US Treasury bond fund (OUSG) is $1.115 billion, second only to Franklin Templeton's Franklin OnChain US Treasury Tokenized Fund and Mountain Protocol's Mountain Protocol USD (USDM), which are valued at $3.255 billion and $1.511 billion, respectively.

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